


"The Beautiful," or, "How Karkat learned the meaning of Independence Day"

by mitspeiler



Series: A Very Homestuck History [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: 'merica, Action, America, Crack, Dragons, F/M, Patriotism, almost a badfic, badfic, crossing the Delaware, fuck it, lady liberty - Freeform, shitty art
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-05
Updated: 2014-07-05
Packaged: 2018-02-07 12:17:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1898718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitspeiler/pseuds/mitspeiler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat is educated on the subject of Freedom by his helpful American comrades, and learns the true facts about the Revolutionary War and freedom (contains exactly four facts).</p>
            </blockquote>





	"The Beautiful," or, "How Karkat learned the meaning of Independence Day"

**Author's Note:**

  * For [polyfandrous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/polyfandrous/gifts), [Lordlyhour](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lordlyhour/gifts), [rezi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rezi/gifts).



[“I don’t give a fuck Karkat,”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwHvyqNDUvE) said Dave, menacing him with a sparkler.  “independence Day is a very important holiday and you’re gonna celebrate it.”

Karkat hissed at him.  “I’m not even from this planet fuckweed, why the shit am I going to celebrate _one_ country’s dumbass founding?  What the hell even is a country?  I’m still surprised you morons haven’t unified under a planetary government.  It’s not that hard.  The Condesce conquered a race of Bronze Age tech level snails that did it.”

Dirk emerged in a burst of red, white and blue sparkles dressed in an Uncle Same costume.  “I think I heard someone over here who needs an injection of _freedom_ ,” he said, glowing red spots appearing in his eyes.

“Fuck no,” said Karkat, shoving him back as the two brothers advanced.  “I don’t need any goddamn ironic patriotism.”

“ _Ironic?_ ”  A tiny yet palpable surge of anger swelled from Dirk, though his expression betrayed nothing.  “There are only two things in this life I take completely seriously, Karkat,” he said with an air of quiet menace.  Raising his index finger, he said, “The first is rap.  The second,” he raised his middle finger into a peace sign, “is _America._ ”  Then he slapped Karkat with the peace sign and retracted his index finger.

“Rose,” Dave called, “hit us with some magic.”

Rose, sitting under a tree reading something printed on tanned human flesh and written in the blood of the damned, wearing her usual velvet squiddleknit as well as a huge top hat decorated with the stars and stripes, sighed and vaguely wiggled one of the Quills of Echidna at the trio.  Nothing happened.

And then a huge rippling hole in the fabric of reality opened up and sucked the three in.

“I’m coming too!” said John, dual wielding sparklers as he dove in after them.

 

“Where the fuck are we now?” Karkat asked with a sigh.  He looked around.  The four boys were in a boat in the middle of an icy river along with a tall adult human dressed like a dandy.

Everyone was dressed like a dandy actually, with fancy tailed coats, shoulder pads and medals, with the exception of Dave, who resembled a Mexican _bandito_.  John was wearing a ridiculous hat and waving a huge flag with excitement that undercut his dramatic pose.  Dirk was sitting at the nose, katana in his lap, kicking away the ice.  Dave was sitting behind Karkat, steering.  “Nice tricorne,” he said.

Karkat looked at himself, wearing red a shirt that was far too flimsy for the cold, a foppish black ascot, and, indeed, a shiny grey tricorne.  He flung it into the river in disgust.  “At least I don’t look like a racial stereotype!"

"Now answer my question!”

“We are crossing the Delaware,” announced the tall human, “so that we can ambush the Hessians at Trenton.”  He wiped some hair away from his forehead heroically.

“If I’m supposed to be learning the meaning of Independence Day,” Karkat snarled, “WHY THE FUCK IS IT SNOWING? DID THE FALLOUT OF THIS WAR TILT THE EARTH’S AXIS?”

John shushed him loudly.  “Karkat, the British will hear us!”  Then he kept right on waving his flag as if his life depended on it.

“British?” Karkat asked, “The big guy _just_ said they were fashions or something.”  He peered around the tall man.  “Dude, the far shore is like a million miles away, you’re going to throw your knee out if you keep it up with the Captain Morgan pose.”  The man ignored him, and if anything stiffened his heroic posture all the more.

The sun started coming up, and everything took on the qualities of an oil painting, even the water sloshing off his oars seemed thicker and slicker than it should.  “I don’t think we’re gonna be very good at this ambush,” Karkat noted, “The sun is coming up.”

“Stop it Karkat,” Dirk said with an air of authority.  “Stop going against _democracy_.”

“You’re an aristocrat,” Karkat said flatly, eyes narrowed.  “And a god.  Anointed by _predestination._ ”

Everyone decided to ignore him again.  John started shouting “USA! USA!”  Karkat banged his head against the edge of the boat.

 

Some time later, their boat and several others made landfall at the far shore, and were immediately set upon by heavy machine gun fire.  “What the fuck!?” Karkat shouted, ducking back inside the boat.

Dirk dragged him up by his fabulous shirt collar.  “Cut it out,” he said, shaking him.  “This place was made by studying the dream bubbles, we aren’t in real danger.”

Karkat was about to say that people got killed in the dream bubbles _all the time_ but then stopped as the tall human leapt off the boat and _[tanked the shit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbRom1Rz8OA)_ out of continuous machine gun fire.  Reaching the gun emplacement, he was sworn at in German before decapitating the mustachioed villain with his saber.

John whooped and threw his flag like a javelin, hitting the second gunner through the chest.  He fell backward into the snow and the flag unfurled, fluttering in the wind.  The Continental Army cheered, and charged up the hill.  “It’s a well known historical fact,” said Dirk as he led Karkat up the snowy bank, “that George Washington was immune to bullets.  Also, a great deal of the ‘British’ troops involved in the Revolution were in fact Germans from Hesse, of which the king of England at the time was also monarch.”

A dead Hessian rolled down the hill and stopped at their feet.  He was wearing a very 19th century looking outfit and a pickelhaube with a roaring lion instead of a spike.  Karkat glared at Dirk.  “Making them look like Nazis invalidates the entire lesson.”

Dirk blew a loud raspberry.  “The outfit is based on Imperial Germany you rube.”

 

The army fought its way through an icy forest loaded down with frost wolves “to represent the harsh winter conditions in valley forge,” Dirk explained, and British ninjas.  “The enemy had vastly superior training,” he said, deflecting a volley of razor sharp tea saucers back at their respective throwers.

A scarlet clad shinobi leapt out of the snow, swinging his kata kai straight for Dirk’s head, roaring “BURITANIARŪRU!”

Dirk switched the grip on his sword and impaled the ninja through the stomach.  In a single motion, Dirk withdrew the blade and struck off the ninja’s head with a backhanded slice.  His sunglasses glowed red once again.  “Sugoi,” they said.  “Ditto,” he agreed.

 

[Finally, the patriotic forces reached Trenton Castle, an enormous tower that resembled nothing more than a horrid parody of a man sitting upon a dark throne. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E-yYkVQmg8) “Ugh,” Karkat said, throwing his stolen ninja scythes down in disgust.  “We have to fight our way through that now, don’t we?”

“Nope,” said Dirk, “we have to fight it.”

“Huh?”

“Little known fact,” said John, lifting up a huge horseman’s pick with one hand and planting it in the skull of a redcoat, “King George the Third was Dracula’s castle.”

“The kings of England have been magical giants ever since Bran the Blessed,” said Dave, loading his weapon; half a blunderbuss with a bayonet.  “Jegus shit Karkat read a fuckin’ book that’s not about tedius troll fucking for once.”

The building seemed to unfold itself into a gargantuan titan with a fabulous fashion sense. 

Washington strode up to the monster, saber in one hand, his axe, Cherryslayre, in the other.  “Die monarch!  You don’t belong in this country!”

“It is not by my hand that I am once again given flesh,” George III boomed, glaring down at the pitiful human with eyes aflame, like a mountain glaring at an ant, “but by humans who wish to pay me taxes!”

Taxes!?” Washington bellowed, “You steal fellow Englishmen’s hard earned cash and make them your subjects!”

“What is an Englishman?” the titan bellowed, his voice shaking the very foundations of the earth, “but a miserable pile of tea leaves!”  He roared and threw aside his golden cape.  “ _Enough of this!  Have at you!_ ”

“I’ve gone insane,” said Karkat, staring at his own hands.  He fell to his knees and contemplated suicide, grabbing at his horns and yanking at hard as he could.

“No,” said Dave, wielding a broken blunderbuss, “you’ve gone _American_.”  He fired his weapon and it immediately exploded in his hands.  Dave’s body disappeared, like in a video game.

Before Karkat could even react, he was snatched into the air by a titanic stone fist clad in lace.  He was lowered towards the tyrant’s gleaming maw—

And then dual flashes of silver sliced across his vision; Dirk and Washington had unleashed the rare and deadly cross-thrust dualtech, destroying the huge fist.  As Karkat fell amid the rubble, he was caught up by John leaping into the air and clutched in his warm embrace.  “Let’s finish him off together!” John said, forcing another huge American flag into Karkat’s hands.  He was about to protest, but the mere act of holding Old Glory filled Karkat with courage and battle-rage, giving him a slight but noticeable erection.

He whispered something that may have been “freedom” and may have been “fuck yeah”; the truth has been lost to time.

He planted the flagstaff into George III’s forehead like a lance.  “NOW!” he shouted, and John pounded it into the giant’s forehead like a stake.  A bright light burst forth, incinerating the redcoats down below but leaving the brave Americans unharmed.  George toppled like a star falling from heaven.

 

Karkat was raised up into the cheering arms of a hundred proud rebels.  “The war is over!” they shouted, “freedom!” they declared.  “MURICA!” they said as one voice.

George’s corpse melted into magma and reformed into a great, red dragon.

Everyone gazed up in awe and terror.  It roared, and crushed George Washington under its meaty claw.

[“Fear not, fellow Americans,”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSAk63gCIko) Dirk said, sword blazing with golden energy, “I will be your new General!  Let me handle this!”  And a great cheer rose up as he charged for the dragon.  With his flaming katana, he entered into a deadly dance with the beast, slashing burning lines across its scales.  Whenever it swiped with a massive paw, Dirk was suddenly not there, leaving its iron claws to slash the frozen ground fruitlessly.

Then, the dragon belched forth a stream of fire and Dirk was thrown flat on the ground, the sword’s colors dimming.  “Wait,” he breathed, clenching the blade as the monster loomed over him.  He gripped so tight that his nails drew blood from his palm.  “I finally know your name,” he said, eyes widening.  He raised himself up onto his shoulders and gazed at the approaching beast.  “My sword’s name…IS LADY LIBERTY.”  Its flames, once a dim gold, now flared deepest red, blinding white, and glorious blue.  The dragon slashed with its claws—

And Dirk cleaved right through them.  The dragon bellowed in pain, rolling onto its back.  Dirk ran up its tail to the thunderous applause of the Continental Army, dragging his sword along the belly of the monster, scoring a trail of patriotic fire.  He came to a rest it its throat and raised his weapon to slay the tyrant once and for all.

“Wait,” said George III, “please, stop and I will grant you three wishes.”

“Silence fiend,” Dirk said, to further applause.

“No stop,” the dragon said quickly, “and I will name you my heir and you shall be king of all you survey.” 

Dirk looked around, tempted very briefly.  The autoresponder glared redly at him, and Dirk set his teeth angrily.  “I will never give in to you, tempter!” He snarled, slightly frazzled.  He plunged the blade—

“Wait,” George whimpered a final time, “let me just…” and then he _mumbled_.

“What?” Dirk asked, leaning in to hear—

And the dragon’s jaws closed around him with a bloody crunch.

“Now,” the dragon boomed, rearing up onto its hind legs, “Behold my true form!” 

 

And with that, he transformed once again, shrinking down, becoming more human, until finally, he resembled nothing more than an incredibly attractive and somewhat effeminate human male.

“It’s just a guy!” shouted someone among the soldiers.  “Let’s kick his ass!”  [And the brave Americans charged once again](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpZ3jPMM5Ac).

He destroyed the entire army with a single wave of his sparkly, beautiful arm, in such a graphically violent way that it cannot be described on American fanfiction sites.  “And now,” he said, “tyranny shall consume the world!”

“NO,” Karkat hissed, picking up the discarded katana.  Whispering, he began his heart-rending final speech.  “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here,” he pointed at the exploded Americans.  “It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. IT IS RATHER FOR US,” he shouted, Lady Libverty flaring back to life with flames that doubled the length of the sword, no _tripled it,_ so bright they were blinding, and so hot they melted the snow and made spring come again, “to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead,” the ghosts of the thousands of dead patriots rose from their bodies, standing in a glimmering, icy-blue phalanx of manly determination,  “we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—“  The ghosts flew up in to the air and plunged into the fires of the sword, giving it a beautiful transcendence that made poets weep and rue the day, for _they were not here_ , and think themselves accursed, and their _manhoods_ cheap, “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—AND THAT GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE, SHALL NOT PERISH FROM THE EARTH!”  John, the sole survivor, clapped and applauded as the sword became a huge, crowned lady the color of old bronze, holding a torch in one hand and a book in the other.

Bishonen III turned to run, and Karkat swung Lady Liberty.

 

Everything faded to white.

 

Karkat woke up surrounded by his friends.  “I had the most wonderful dream,” he said, voice full of awe and discovery.  “Except you were there, and you were there, and _you_ were there!” He pointed to each in turn with his middle finger.

“Ah,” said Rose, still wearing her Uncle Sam top hat, “but did you learn the true meaning of Independence Day?”

Karkat leapt to his feet, pulling out an identical hat.  “Fuck yeah I did! Let’s hit it!” before pulling her into a passionate kiss and dropping her, dumbfounded and breathless on the floor.

 

Karkat

Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light  
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?

 

John  
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,  
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?

 

Dave  
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,  
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.

 

Dirk  
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave

 

And here the boys stopped and pointed at Rose expectantly.   She stood up sighed, dusted off her skirt, wiped a little smear of lipstick off her cheek, took a deep breath, and let out, in a smooth, [chocolaty caramel voice](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGDH18R7GfA), a bombastic:

 

Rose  
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?

 

            Everyone clapped, in tears.  “This song was written in 1812 to the tune of a drinking song,” said Rose.

**Author's Note:**

> ‘merica.  
> This fic is entirely dedicated to those three friends, who, coincidentally, are a Canadian, an Australian, and an Englishwoman, respectively. Much love and all that. International unity, etc., whatever.  
> This fic was never going to be serious, but I did try very hard to make it so that it escalated into complete nonsense very quickly, almost as if I had gone crazy writing it. And man, sometimes the mood for Karkat/Rose hits me completely a propos of nothing, but it would kinda work wouldn’t it? :O  
> Your homework is to come up with a good ship name for that. Happy freedom day bitches.


End file.
